Media: El Cultural
Original Title: Los museos deberían servir al arte, pero se sirven de él
Author: María Marco
Photography: Todolí Citrus Fundació, Espasa, JEOSM
Date: Septiembre 5, 2025
Museums should serve art, but they serve themselves of it
After the vertigo of running grand museums like Tate Modern in London or the Serralves Foundation in Porto, Todolí returns to the calm of the childhood orchard where, thanks to his foundation, he preserves over 500 citrus species. Art and citriculture are rooted in the memory of a past to imagine a new future.
One afternoon in 1987, while working at IVAM, Vicente Todolí (Palmera, Valencia, 1958) panicked: images began to whiz before his eyes at vertiginous speed, taking hold of him. He had become stuck in the gaze, without truly understanding the world. He needed to grasp it, to give it shape.
That is how he recounts in his recent book Quisiera crear un jardín (y verlo crecer) (Espasa) the adventure that ignited his love for citrus —inspired by the Medicis— and how he turned orchards and gardens into a form of political militancy. A “juice” of memories that grafts his trajectory —as director of the Serralves Foundation, IVAM and Tate Modern— into an intimate biography while creating his legacy: the Todolí Citrus Foundation.
Question: It all begins in 2007, when you put a huge citron you found on the island of Ischia into your largest suitcase to plant it on your land in Palmera. What led you to do that?
Answer: At that moment I did not know anything about what a citron was. I saw a small tree with enormous fruits and said to myself, “But what is this?” A monstrosity! I began studying and discovered that the citron is the first citrus that arrived in Europe, described by botanists travelling with Alexander the Great. It is used in Palestine during the festival of Sukkot which commemorates the exodus from Egypt, after which it passed to Greece, then to Rome, with many medicinal uses —even against halitosis— and it becomes a mythic fruit.
Q. You cite in your book the Medicis as inspiration for your garden. What connects them to lemons?
A. In the sixteenth century, the great Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici began collecting citrus as part of his political and aesthetic program, unleashing a citrus-mania that fascinated Europe for more than two centuries. From there came the orangeries, buildings that housed citrus trees in large pots to protect them from winter. They became symbols of a humanistic “golden age” that reaches us today in the form of a botanical garden.
“IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY COSIMO DE’ MEDICI BEGINS TO
COLLECT CITRUS. HE SPARKS A CITRUSMANIA THAT FASCINATES
ALL OF EUROPE”
Q. Does the history of citrus fruits sum up the history of humanity?
A. Practically, yes. When we decided to create the foundation —which today preserves more than five hundred varieties— I started researching, and all these fascinating facts began to appear.
TODOLÍ CITRUS FOUNDATION
Q. What is your purpose?
A. To preserve the land from urban speculation and leave my legacy of trees.
Q. And the hardest challenge?
A. Buying the land. We started from some of my brother’s lands and expansion became like a domino game: we have grouped twenty-four separate plots. In Valencia small farms prevail —when inherited, estates get subdivided— and I found orchards of 400 m². You had to know how to buy, negotiate; I didn’t know how, but someone came who did, and helped me. That’s when the foundation emerged and we included that person on the board. When a neighbour refused to sell, we simply grew in another direction.
Q. Would your model work with other crops or in other autonomous communities?
A. It depends on the laws. Planting a garden is the best way to halt those processes of urban depreciation, but it must be a singular garden, like a museum. They cannot be clones; that is agriculture. The idea of clone goes against the idea of garden.
“THE GARDEN IS THE ORIGIN OF PARADISE BECAUSE
IT SPEAKS TO ALL THE SENSES. NO FRUIT
WITH SO MANY TREATISES AND APPLICATIONS”
Q. In the book you say you like to work the orchard like a museum. What do art and citriculture have in common?
A. Renaissance humanism considers horticulture one of the arts; so does topiary, the art of shaping plants and trees, of which Valencians have been experts, practicing it around the world. The garden is the origin of paradise because it appeals to all senses. There is no fruit with as many treatises, research and applications. We have pending a publication analyzing all the parallels between art and citrus.
Q. They have many things in common: treatment of space, light, design, color, composition, route…
A. We have made a citrus-garden orchard, a botanical orchard of citrus, grouping morphological varieties. We established paths with meanders and nooks. Rhythm is essential, as in an exhibition or museum collection: it cannot be a freeway; it must be a path between rivers and mountains where, suddenly, a curve changes your perspective.
ART CULTIVATION
Q. You will have an exhibition space, the Espai Citrus, as well as works by various artists, like Carsten Höller’s aviary.
A. The architect, Carlos Salazar, has designed the project, and we are still waiting for the town hall to approve it. And Höller before being an artist was a biologist, specialized in insect pheromones and had two passions: mycology and songbirds. As those birds shelter from the wind in citrus trees and my grandfather also held bird-song contests, we have put a cage where we temporarily keep birds brought by enthusiasts, those that are not great singers, only to release them later and support others.
Q. Also you have a lab. What do you research?
A. Our lab is geared toward chefs experimenting with citrus and research into essential oils and their uses in perfumery. The origin of cologne water, for example, is in the bergamot: an Italian formulated in Cologne an aqua mirabilis in the late 17th century, conceived as a “miraculous” and medicinal remedy.
Q. Are you going to make perfumes?
A. We have a project with Loewe to create an essence with one of our citrus. It takes time: many trials are needed. They have chosen the variety and we must increase production to have more stock. We are open to collaborations in all fields. Also, a gin named Silex, jams and chocolates are made.
Q. Which varieties are most special?
A. An Australian one shaped like a finger, the finger lime, whose pearls burst in the mouth like caviar. In Japan they cultivate the mikan-su su (vinegar and mikan, mandarin-vinegar), used as a mandarin vinegar condiment. Citrus speak of the culture of each country. Japan worships its citrus more than anywhere, followed by Italy. Spain, despite being the leading producer, only cares about commercial varieties; in Italy, by contrast, they preserved them for their beauty, aesthetic pleasure and medicinal properties.
Q. And the most surprising recipe made with your citrus?
A. An ice cream that, for me, is the best in the world and that you must try if you go to Logroño: the one from dellaSera ice cream shop. They are the authors of the flavour “shade of fig” — which they obtain by macerating fig leaves. Fernando [Sáenz] came by the foundation years ago with shikwasa (a citrus from Okinawa) with which they created the flavour “mandarina shikwasa del huerto botánico de Vicente Todolí.” And another thing: the albedo — the white part— which tends to be bitter, but in citron is edible and the resulting recipes are exceptional: its perfume, texture and, in addition, it is full of medicinal properties. The first to use it was Ferran Adrià.
WRITING AMONG ORANGE TREES
Q. How did the publication of this book come about?
A. It was commissioned by Espasa during COVID. I would never have thought of it: I respect writing too much, I don’t have time and I feel shy. I believe privacy is the great treasure; that’s why I don’t have social media. But I thought: Why not write down what I think? They are fragmented memories, without wanting to give lessons: just sharing my experience as a first and last act of writing. The publisher snatched it out of my hands; otherwise I would still be turning it over in my mind.
Q. Writing is, like art, hard to say it is finished. They say Oscar Wilde took weeks to decide where to put a comma.
A. Exactly. Francis Bacon, the Marlborough gallery would periodically send a secretary to collect paintings from the studio.
Q. Paintings unfinished?
A. Bacon obsessively worked on one painting at a time. If he showed up drunk at five in the morning, he’d keep painting and ruin it; then he’d ask to have it destroyed. Thanks to them not doing so, great works have reached us. If he stopped too early, it wasn’t finished; if he kept going, he ruined — in some exhibition I called this “painting as an irresolvable conflict.”
Q. Another interesting chapter is when, already as director of the Tate, you hated the constant meetings of large teams. You write that “instead of exhibiting art, it seemed they were selling potatoes.”
A. I hate those meetings because they become status shows. Instead of productive dialogue they end up as totally unproductive ego battles. More research, fewer meetings.
Q. So where does art stand in large institutions?
A. Museums should serve art, but now large museums serve themselves of it. For example, expansions: many times they are unnecessary: growth for the sake of growth is absurd.
FROM VILLAGE TO METROPOLIS
Q. How has the art world changed since you began in 1982?
A. Phew! From a village where everyone knew each other, it became a city and now a great metropolis. In the fairs of the eighties people talked about art; today the market is made by auctions and international fairs with dealers who have no idea about art and move for status and investment. It’s a world I do not participate in. I don’t go to fairs or openings where the centre is the social aspect, showing off and being seen. That doesn’t interest me. I miss it when art was smaller and values were different: art was first and talking about money was in bad taste.
“I DON’T GO TO FAIRS OR OPENINGS
WHERE THE CENTRE IS SOCIAL, SHOWING OFF
AND BEING SEEN. THAT DOESN’T INTEREST ME”
Q. You now programme the monumental Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in Milan. What exhibitions are you preparing?
A. That has been my main job since 2013. We do site-specific retrospectives for industrial spaces — an old turbine factory now used for culture. There is a hall for early-career artists (1,500 m², 10 m high) and another of 5,500 m² with 20 m height for retrospectives. The next exhibitions will be Yuko Mohri and Nan Goldin. Here I have absolute freedom to programme without social life; I travel only once a month. In such large spaces you never know if the works will work, it’s a great challenge and breaks the routine. For me it is not work: it’s a game. I have just renewed the contract, so I will be there four more years.
Q. To conclude: what book would you recommend reading in the shade of an orange tree?
A. What a great question! One of the authors I read most is Marco Martella. I would recommend Jardines en tiempos de guerra, written under the heteronym of Teodor Ceric. Also the beautiful text Un pequeño mundo, un mundo perfecto.
